In today's business society, customer relations and customer satisfaction are critical for successful and profitable operations. Customers purchase various products and services from a variety of providers, and use various purchase means. When customers purchase various products and services, they often have questions, concerns, or complaints about their purchases. To maximize customer satisfaction, businesses must be capable of responding quickly and effectively to customer questions, concerns, or complaints. Many businesses employ customer care agents in interaction centers (IC) who are responsible for interacting with customers. These agents may interact with customers personally or over the telephone. These chat sessions allow agents to communicate quickly and easily with customers all over the world.
In recent years, interaction centers have become much more widespread. A call center is one type of IC that has agents to place and receive calls. The interaction center agents may deal with, for example, customer service calls or sales calls. The interaction centers manage many efforts, and interaction center agents working in these centers often place and receive thousands of calls to and from various customers in different regions of the country.
In recent years, telephone call centers have become much more widespread. The call centers manage many efforts, and calling agents working in these centers often place thousands of calls to various customers in different regions of the country. These agents often use headsets to speak with customers while the agents concurrently enter information relating to the customers into a computer workstation.
There are a wide variety of transactions carried out by these telephone call centers. For example, banks may want to contact current customers and ask them if they would be interested in obtaining a new credit card. Long distance telephone companies may want to contact homeowners and ask if they would be interested in switching long distance carriers. Fundraisers may call individuals to ask for donations. Various other telemarketers may call homeowners or business owners to solicit various products or services.
When an agent speaks with individuals over the phone, the agent's success in processing the interaction may depend on certain key information that the agent needs to remember throughout the interaction session. For example, one crucial piece of information that the agent needs to have instant access to is the individual's name. An interaction may fail if the agent forgets the individual's name. Often, call center agents write the name down on a piece of paper with a pen to ensure the proper name is always instantly recallable. However, this is inefficient, as the agent must disengage from processing the information using the computer terminal.
At any time during the course of an interaction, the call center agent may need to refer to certain key information (e.g., customer name, product name). Call center software applications generally display, for example, at certain times and in certain locations, the individual's name on the screen in a graphical user interface (GUI). During a call, however, a call center agent reviews rapidly changing screens, or view sets, of information. As the GUI changes view sets to display different information, the name may be removed, or moved to a different location so that the agent must search for the name. This can add stress to the agent, and delay the agent's responsiveness to the individual.
Typically, a web-based user interface does not persistently display key information in the same physical location on the screen throughout the session. Inaccessibility of key information may impair the agent's performance during a call. In a web browser interface, the typical navigation bar may display some information persistently, but it may not be adequate to display all of the critical information in a format that the agent can easily digest while the agent enters data and navigates through application screens.
Some user interfaces display certain key information, but the information is displayed using multiple windows or using segregated (unintegrated) areas of the display. In some user interfaces, the display is integrated, but key information is not persistently displayed at a fixed screen location throughout an interaction.